Many people have difficulty reading. Causes include poor schooling, poor vision, mental retardation, dementia and other cognitive limitations.
Software, frequently called screen reader software, has been designed to read electronic text to people who have difficulty reading. Some screen readers, such as JAWS by Freedom Scientific, are designed for people who are blind. Other screen readers, such as the eReader by CAST, are designed for people who have learning disabilities such as dyslexia. Some screen readers, such as the WebTrek by AbleLink Technologies and the Talking Browser by Point-and-Read are designed for people with cognitive limitations such as mental retardation. Screen readers reduce the need to have human readers for people with disabilities.
People with cognitive limitations sometimes need “strict sequencing” in order to learn to do a task and may need prompting to finish the task. “Strict sequencing” means reducing a task (such as making a bed, mopping a floor or using a coffee maker) to a set of sub-tasks that must be accomplished in a particular order.
For example, using a coffee maker involves taking out the old filter, throwing it away, getting a new filter putting the filter in the machine, filling the filter with ground coffee, closing the machine, getting measuring cup for water, filling the cup with water, pouring the water in the machine, turning on the machine, turning on the timer, pouring out the coffee when the timer rings, and turning off the machine. In addition, people with cognitive limitations from time to time forget a sub-task, and must be reminded of it in order to complete the task correctly and safely. For example, forgetting to put the water in the coffee machine will not only mean that the machine cannot produce coffee, but might also pose a hazard of electrical fire if the machine is turned on. In many situations, aides or helpers will prompt the individual to finish a sub-task if the individual forgets or attempts to omit it.
“Prompting” means reminding a person to do something, with the prompt given at the time the person forgets to do it.
The prompt can be concrete and definite (e.g., “Turn off the stove.”) or “abstract and amorphous” (e.g., “Isn't there something you have to finish?”). A prompt can be a command or a question. In any event, a prompt reminds a person to do (or finish) something they just forgot about. A prompt can be words or gestures or signals. For example pointing to the coffee pot may be a prompt to turn it off. A blinking light or buzzer may be a prompt for a particular action. Word prompts can be spoken (via human or synthesized voice) or printed (consider a card with the word “quiet” that a school librarian holds up when children are noisy or a pop-up message on a computer).
There is software designed to help people with cognitive disabilities remember task sequences and prompt them as necessary. For example, there is audio-visual software designed to make simple videos (e.g., making a bed) both to train people in tasks, and to allow them to check off the parts of the task done (e.g., Visual Impact by AbleLink). When a sub-task is checked off, the software can remind the user to do the next subtask. There is also software that can be loaded onto a PDA (i.e. a hand-held personal digital assistant such as a Palm Pilot) that a person carries around, that will remind him or her of important subtasks of things he or she is doing, provide prompts as necessary, and allow check offs of sub-tasks accomplished (e.g., Pocket Coach by AbleLink). (Such prompts can remind a person to turn off the coffee pot and put house keys in the person's pocket before leaving the house.) Such software and hardware can reduce the need for human aides to provide prompting. Sometimes, software for a specific task includes prompting, such as AbleLink's WebTrek (for browsing) and WebTrek Connect (for recording and sending voice mail).
Some of this prompting software requires the user to manually indicate the completion of each subtask (such as by pressing a physical button or clicking on an “on-screen” picture of a button). Other software will talk the user through every step and each subtask every time the software is used. There is other software, such as Microsoft's Office Assistant, which will try to determine what type of task the user is trying to do (e.g., write a letter), and then “ask” if the user wants help doing it. The “asking” can be through voice recordings, computer synthesized speech or an on-screen text message.
There are some tasks, however, like reading, that have many subtasks (i) which are repeated over and over continually if not continuously in a variety of similar but different patterns, (ii) which people (especially those with cognitive disabilities) occasionally forget, and (iii) which when missed can prevent successful completion of the task. Such tasks may be referred to as being “semi-repetitive.” Repeated prompting will reduce (but not necessarily eliminate) the amount of prompting needed.
For example, in reading English, one must (a) read one sentence after another, (b) read from left to right, and (c) at the end of a line of text swoop back to the leftmost part of the next line. People with cognitive disabilities, particularly if they also have visual disabilities, may have a hard time accomplishing all three tasks all of the time, even with assistive software. But if a non-reader is using screen reading software and the non-reader skips a sentence, or reads the wrong sentence, it can alter the meaning of the written passage or even cause the user to lose all sense of where the user is reading on the page. If the user forgot to do each subtask every time, there would be almost continual prompts, because of the fine granularity of the subtasks. Such prompts may be referred to as “micro-prompts.” Micro-prompts are prompts given when most subtasks are of fine granularity and could be subject to a prompt. If a micro-prompt was issued for every subtask, the micro-prompts would be issued incessantly. For most users, any particular micro-prompt may only need to be issued sporadically. There is no available prompting software to assist with such sporadic micro-prompts for semi-repetitive tasks.